


The Heterodoxy of Envy

by Byacolate



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Domestic, Emotional Manipulation, Established Relationship, F/M, Flowers and Chocolate, Implied/Referenced Torture, Jealousy, Miscommunication, Oral Sex, Past Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-08 07:48:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8836324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byacolate/pseuds/Byacolate
Summary: Jack's never been in the doghouse before. He takes to it with grace.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Commissioned by an anonymous Tumblr user who wanted a romcom-esque fic of Widowmaker jealous of Mercy regarding Soldier: 76 and exasperated Jack making amends.
> 
> Breakdown of tags in the end notes.

They keep a safe-house in Hong Kong, though “house” is a relative term. In reality, they split the bills and utilities for a small apartment above a Korean restaurant from an auntie who happens to owe a life debt to Amélie Lacroix.

 

Widowmaker might insist Amélie is dead, but that doesn’t stop her from using her name to cash in on certain favors when convenient. That suits Jack just fine.

 

Neither of them feel the winter chill, though the winters Hong Kong are mild at worst. She arrives in early February, in the middle of the greatest flux and flow of Chinese New Year homecomers and vacationers, respectively. Jack prefers to duck in and out on slow days, but Widowmaker keeps to throngs and crowds. Gabe’s old tricks, habits imprinted on her that Jack recognizes and respects.

 

It's early in the evening when she enters the flat with a heavy click of the lock, dropping her keys into the little bowl by the door. Jack has a perfect scope on her from the kitchenette. The knife in his hand slides through ripe red flesh like butter.

 

“We have pasta.”

 

The long black case housing her rifle clunks against the door when she sets it down, and the duffel bag slung over her shoulder follows not long after.

 

“You are trying to cook again?” she asks, her brows a skeptical arch.

 

Jack points the fine blade in her direction. “There ain’t a damn problem with my cooking, woman. I won't hear your slander.”

 

She scoffs. “You never find the right noodles.”

 

“You can keep insisting that the kind of noodle _matters_ until you’re blue in the face, but... oh, wait...”

 

“Yes yes, clever man.” She unzips her light jacket, her boots clicking on the cheaply tiled floor as she sidles up next to him. “Keep talking if it keeps you away from the stove.”

 

Widowmaker tips his chin up and leans down to kiss him, propped even higher in her heels. He has to tilt his head to meet her, sock feet planted firmly on the floor. They might be nearly even if he wore the house sandals by the door, but Jack never really took to the custom.   


 

She tastes like mint chewing gum and waxy lipstick, which she wipes from his mouth with a thumb when she’s through.

 

“I reek of recycled air,” she says with a wrinkled nose, scraping a nail up the line of Jack’s neck before she pulls away. “I’m going to shower.”

 

“Dinner’ll be ready by the time you're through.”

 

She tuts and pinches one of his cheeks, and disappears into the bathroom, tossing her heels - clop-thunk - as she goes.

 

They have a policy of neutrality in the safe-house - business stays just outside the door. Overwatch is as much a part of Jack’s bloodstream as Talon was warped into hers, but they shed those skins at the doorstep. Inside, they become something else; they're two people in the same skin as Talon's Widowmaker and Overwatch's renegade Strike Commander, yet somehow inexplicably changed. Compartmentalization works when little else does, these days.   


 

While the tomatoes simmer with sugar and egg and tomato sauce on the stove, Jack scoops up her boots and rests them neatly by the front door. He sets the table, whistling a low old tune, before he returns to his perfectly acceptable noodles.

 

He sets the music player on the counter to synthetic jazz and digs around in the cupboards for the bottle of Chinese spirits he knows he stashed away up there in August. He finds it behind the red wine, triumphant. Jack smooths his hand over the bottle and grins down at the dust on his fingers, remembering the market by the beach where they’d found it.

 

Jack wonders how many people have seen the Widowmaker in a sunhat and flip flops and lived to tell the tale.

 

He takes two chilled glasses from the freezer and fills them up beside the plates, and Jack feels nothing but satisfaction for his immaculate presentation. He’s made a damn fine dinner, and it looks good too.

 

Not ten minutes later she steps out of the bathroom in a rolling cloud of steam, the apartment flooding with the scent of her shampoo. Her hair hangs long and damp over a shoulder where she towels at it idly in a tight purple sweater and leggings, surveying his spread.

 

“A place for everything, and everything in its place,” she teases, seating herself regally in her favorite chair. Before he can dish any food out for her, she’s already taken a deep swallow from her glass of wine, hissing at the burn. 

 

“Good stuff, huh.” He grins.

 

“I always forget how wretched this is,” comes her throaty response before she takes the next sip a little slower.

 

Through dinner - “Passable, but perhaps not so much sugar next time, mon chér.” - she regales him of her airport adventures, the flirtatious hostess, the trials of flying coach. She’s only just propped her feet in his lap on her third glass of Chinese spirits when his phone starts to vibrate. That’s his private line too, a number known only by a very select few. It rattles demandingly on the linoleum counter top until finally, Jack heaves a sigh and pats her ankles.

 

“Hold that thought,” he grunts, and pushes himself out of the chair.

 

_ A.Z.  _ flashes cheerfully across the screen. Jack denies the call, but scoops up his phone to shoot off a quick text.

 

[life or death?]

 

[Neither!] Angela sends, and not three seconds later, a picture pops into his inbox.

 

He snorts at the image of Genji and McCree crouching and throwing up peace signs on either side of a dog they’ve fitted in... one of his jackets.

 

[They’re calling him Jack Russel Morrison.]

 

Jack twitches, half a second away from silencing his phone, but...

 

[clearly a mutt. first glance, looks approx. 0% j.r. terrier.]

 

He pockets the phone, content with his two cents proffered, and settles himself back across from Widowmaker.

 

“Now,” he says, topping up her glass. “What were you saying about the delay in Qatar?”

 

 

 

 

The next time he checks his phone, she’s dozing on his shoulder with her legs thrown over his lap on the couch. He mutes the movie and flicks through his missed messages - all three of them.  


 

[Ever the realist. ;-)]

 

[Is your jacket dry clean or hand-wash? I need to know which chore to task them with.]

 

[Consider giving them your number so they can send their complaints directly to you. I can only withstand so much of Jesse begging me to call you Strike Commander Buzzkill.]

 

“Heh.” Jack takes care not to jostle Widowmaker’s head as he taps out a response.

 

[leave them hanging. builds character.]

 

He can see her writing back, and allows for at least one more text before he tucks his phone away for the night - just to be polite.

 

[The only thing building is my headache.]

 

[physician, heal thyself]

 

“Tsk. Do you flirt often with Ay Zee while you lie with another woman?” a rich voice purrs in his ear. Jack sets his phone down with a quiet laugh and rubs a hand up and down one of her thighs.

 

“You ready for bed?”

 

“Hmm.” She stretches her legs out before sliding them out of his lap and standing. With the tilt of her head, her long dark hair falls over one shoulder.  


 

“You’ll join me.” 

 

Jack heaves himself up with an exaggerated sigh. “Yeah, 'course. Right behind you.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

He knows Angela worries when he goes off on his own without two words of explanation. After his last stint with disappearances, Jack can hardly blame her. He knows that’s why she texts him on and off through the two weeks he spends in the safe-house. He can see Widowmaker’s curiosity whenever his phone pings, but it was a mutual agreement: Leave their business at the door. Jack figures Mercy counts as business, and dutifully, keeps his lips locked up tighter than a miser’s coin purse.

 

Their down time ends two weeks later when the worst of the Chinese New Year traffic has thinned, Jack packing up and shipping out two days before the late Amélie. He’d be comfortable stating that the terms they part on are good - even great.

 

But that wouldn’t be his first mistake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Heads up: Talon agents spotted on your twelve.” McCree warns over the line. Angela and Jack share a look, but they don’t halt in their progress across the docks toward their quarry. “Got Hanzo watchin’ your asses from a balcony in the fishing district on your ten. I got held up by an old friend, but I’m on my way with Miss Song.”

 

The distress signal still pings on Jack’s visor, along with a signature he’s... intimately familiar with. The former is a blip in the building just ahead; the latter, a blip slightly further to the right.

 

Talon _would_   hold their hostages in such a dramatic position.

 

“Copy,” Jack responds, just after Mercy gives her own confirmation.

 

A moment before they round the stacked crates, their final hurdle from the platform to the pier, Jack’s visor winks off before it boots back up with a purple skull.

 

_“Hola, gringo,”_ comes a chipper titter in his comm - Mercy’s too, from the look she throws him. With a growl, Jack deactivates his visor before he vaults the crates and lands on top in a crouch. 

 

“We’ve been compromised,” he says, two fingers to his comm on the off chance Sombra left the damn line on. Then he pulls it from his ear and crushes it under the heel of a heavy combat boot. When he turns around, he sees Mercy sigh as she follows suit, grinding her communicator into the pavement with a dainty heel.

 

“Such a waste of good technology,” she mourns. Jack lifts the rifle in his arms.

 

“Plenty more where that came from. Stay here, wait for McCree. I’m going in.”

 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Jack,” she scolds, shoulders back. “You’re not going in alone.”

 

“There’s only one of them. Checked before the hack.”

 

"For now, there is only one!" Mercy purses her lips, tapping her Caduceus staff to the ground. “I don’t like this, Jack.”

 

He smirks behind his visor. “You hear me hollerin’, count down from twenty. Then you can swoop in. For now, we only need one vigilante.”

 

“I will count down from _ten_ ,” Mercy says, fist clenched around her staff. “But there will be no counting when the others arrive.”

 

“Copy that.”

 

“Be careful, Jack.”

 

He’s only a little remorseful that he can’t tell her that carefulness won’t be entirely necessary. 

 

Over the stack of crates, the warehouse… doesn’t loom, really. It’s a squat building, all grey, fairly unassuming, but long and split down the middle on the opposite side along the pier. It’s more of a metal shack for fishermen, open air toward the sea. Jack finds the door unlocked (well... to a certain degree - using an outdated manual padlock system seems a poor choice when a man like Jack might come along with a pulse rifle and a keen knowledge of where to shoot). 

 

The smell of brine is concentrated within, along with whatever they stockpile for tackle. It isn’t the most appetizing location, but Jack’s rescued from worse.

 

A familiar figure stands poised across from a group of cowering men - four in total, one sprawled across the floor. Jack moves to activate his visor to check for vital signs before he remembers the hack. 

 

“Come no closer,” comes the Widowmaker’s frosty voice. Water laps at the side of the wooden platform. Jack jerks his chin at the prone hostage.

 

“He still breathing?” 

 

The Widowmaker narrows her eyes at him before she looks away, unresponsive. That’s… well, not too unusual. Hard to keep private trysts private when you’re too amicable on the field. 

 

“H-he’s alive, just hurt real bad,” one of the hostages squeak, hands up. One of his buddies elbow him hard in the side and whispers something harshly, but the first man shakes his head. “Don’t you recognize him? That’s the one from - from Overwatch! He’ll save us, he’ll -”

 

Widowmaker takes a single step closer, and they all go silent and trembling. She lifts her rifle to her shoulder and smiles indulgently their way.

 

“Oh, my dears,” she says and laughs quietly, cruelly. “How very mistaken you are.”

 

A burst of darkness appears to his left and a clawed hand wrenches Jack back. 

 

Tussling with Reaper is nothing new - honestly, at this point, it’s almost routine. They punch and kick and duck, and when old training and dirty fighting gets old, Reaper evaporates into mist. Jack knows he’s being led away from the hostages, but he lets it happen; Reaper doesn’t give him much of a choice, but Jack’s been mentally counting down to his team’s ETA, and he gives them no more than forty seconds to crash the party.

 

When they do, they do not disappoint. Mercy calls his name from across the room and glides toward him along a streak of golden light. D. Va and McCree are loud and brash, but deadly, and in such close quarters the Widowmaker is somewhat out of her element. Reaper knows, too, and before Jack can land a good punch, Reaper fades and sinks into the floor only to reappear by her side. 

 

A rev of a boat engine cuts through the battle noise, and not a moment later, Sombra appears by the dock from the open sea on a jet ski. 

 

Utterly ridiculous, but the timing... convenient.  


 

She salutes them all with a wink, and Reaper has a few choice words for her in Spanish as he grips the unconscious hostage by the back of his jacket with long black claws and tosses him onto the back of the jet ski.

 

McCree makes to shoot him through the middle, but Reaper disappears and reappears behind Sombra, one claw fisted in the man’s jacket. And Widowmaker… Widowmaker doesn’t look at Jack even once as she releases a spray of bullets into D. Va’s MEKA. She turns as Mercy raises her pistol and leaps, spring-boarding off of the hostage's back and grappling onto the roof of the building. Sombra smirks and wiggles her fingers in farewell before the engine revs and she cuts out to the sea.

 

D. Va makes to fly after, but her MEKA’s propulsion is limited; she returns not long after, muttering to herself in Korean and parking her mech.

 

“Well,” McCree says when Mercy kneels to tend to the remaining hostages. “Three out of four ain’t bad.”

  
  


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While Winston and Athena work to solve the dilemma of Soldier 76’s hackable eyewear, Jack returns to his bunk. Seeing Widowmaker lit up a pleasant flame in his gut, and though a little unorthodox so soon after their last getaway, Jack pulls his private phone from the confines of his trunk. 

 

“Athena,” he says aloud to the room.

 

“Yes, Jack?”

 

“Give me a little privacy, would you?”

 

“Understood.”

 

He waits for the telltale sign of her sign off and powers up his phone. 

 

[saw the nick on your shoulder. got it checked out?]

 

He doesn’t expect an immediate response, and he doesn’t get one. It’s no surprise; he has no idea what she’s doing, or where in the world she might be - if she’s sleeping or trapped, drinking or convalescing. Maybe she doesn’t use her private line in the company of a super hacker.

 

Still, logic aside, he’s a little disappointed when he goes to bed without a response. It only grows when he wakes up to radio silence the next morning when he wakes at dawn.

 

And the next morning.

 

And the next.

 

He must check that the message has sent a dozen times, but the phone indicates it was sent and received and, most damning of all: it was seen. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
  


“I dropped it into the sea,” says what lies below when she removes the outer shell of the Widowmaker.

 

Hong Kong is already near stifling in late April, the afternoon sun a bright and cheerful ray beaming down from outside. She’s drawn the window curtains, though, but Jack doesn’t mind. He knows she doesn’t care for harsh light. Not that kind of a spider.

 

Jack blinks, dropping his duffel bag on the floor by the sofa where she lounges. 

 

“Your phone… fell into the sea.”

 

She tilts up her nose from where she’d had it bent over a book, though her eyes remain on the tablet screen.

 

“That is what I said. I don’t know your number by heart, so I could not respond from a new one.” 

 

Jack rubs at his jaw, nodding slowly. “Suppose it’s good we’d already saved the date for this trip, huh? Could keep a backup of my number, but...”

 

She shrugs. Taps the page. “Secrecy demands sacrifice.”

 

Hard to argue with that. Jack shrugs the weird creeping sensation in his gut off and gestures toward her. “You wanna give me your new phone? I’ll put my number in. Get yours.”

 

Bafflingly, Widowmaker makes a noncommittal noise before she takes the phone from her side and slides it over the sofa cushions toward him. 

 

As Jack taps his number in, he can’t help but feel… unsettled, somehow. Like something isn’t right. That he can’t place the feeling discomfits him deeply. He returns her phone and yields to old paranoia, starting a thorough sweep of the apartment in the bedroom. No bugs he can see, except a few of Widowmaker’s own. The curtains are drawn, and a peek outside reveals no sign of surveillance, nothing suspicious.

 

Jack searches the bathroom too, and the kitchenette, smoothing his hands over every surface, eyes out for anything peculiar in nooks and crannies. Crevices. Plain sight.

 

When he finally makes it to the living room, Widowmaker gives him an odd look. 

 

“What is your problem?”

 

“Dunno.” He frowns, and checks this window as well. “Something feels off.”

 

At this, Widowmaker snorts and mutters something under her breath in French. Jack’s been taking lessons, but he’s hardly fluent. He thinks she might be calling him a fool, so he shrugs. 

 

“Can’t be too careful. I’m gonna go check outside.”

 

He does a sweep of the Korean restaurant, and is laden with food from the kindly old auntie when he returns from a brisk check around the block. 

 

“It looks like you found something,” Widowmaker says with a sniff when he returns with a bag full of Korean comfort food.

 

The unsettled feeling doesn’t dissipate all through dinner. Conversation is stilted, one-sided. Jack thinks this trip might fall on a bad time for her, and when he asks, she waves him off with an airy remark. She doesn’t make any grabs for his kimchi pancake like she normally might, and her feet never land in his lap.

 

The cherry on top of the bizarre evening sundae drops when Jack’s looking through their collection to pick the first night movie when he hears a soft  _ fwump  _ behind him. Turning, he catches Widowmaker dropping a single blanket on top of the pillow she’d left on the couch.

 

“I want to be alone tonight,” she says, and turns on her heel when Jack starts to respond dazedly.

 

“Yeah, sure,” he starts, and the door to the bedroom clicks in lieu of a response. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The gnawing feeling in his gut doesn’t disappear the whole week they spend away, and near the end, he’s actually relieved to be going. Widowmaker’s departure is first, and true to form in light of the week at large, he’s commandeering the sofa for the night. 

 

Jack knows only a modicum of what she’s been through, though more information was gleaned from Winston than the woman herself. He knows about the reconditioning tantamount to torture Talon inflicted upon her. Whatever they did was enough to change the pigment of her skin, dull her physical sensitivity, render her emotional processing very nearly obsolete. An old soldier has a bit of experience with trauma, and what it does to people. He doesn’t begrudge her this mood, or any other. 

 

But that doesn’t mean he has to like it. The crick in his neck has been making his life hell, and… 

 

Well. He misses her.

 

It isn’t often they get time away, every few months at best. Beyond that, communication is so scarce as to be nonexistent. So when the stars of rigorous planning align, to not be near her… 

 

Jack falls asleep, feeling useless and confused, that gnawing in his gut coloring his dreams a sickly shade of violet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next morning he wakes long before the sun to make breakfast. She has an early flight, and detests the selection at the Hong Kong Airport, so he scrounges together what dwindling ingredients they’ve accumulated over the week. His flight doesn’t leave for two more days, but he can take care of himself once she’s gone. 

 

When she emerges from the bedroom, something about her seems… different. Maybe it’s the hour, or the hindsight of a week spent uncomfortably close but separate, but something in her face, her posture, is softer. 

 

She eyes over the breakfast he’s frying on the stove, the cup of coffee he’s set out for her - black, one sugar, just unsweet enough to deny it’s there - and sets her bag and rifle case on the floor. 

 

“Bonjour,” she sighs, moving closer to him now than she has all week. It’s a little late, but he’ll take it. Widowmaker slides a hand up his spine and rests her cheek on his shoulder, just long enough to sigh. 

 

“Morning,” he greets, stirring his hodgepodge mess of scrambled eggs. “Thought you might be hungry.”

 

“I will be.” Her nails draw tiny spiraling patterns on his back as she watches him work. Her heels make her even taller than she already is, imposing and lovely. Jack can see her just standing there from the corner of his eye, and he very badly wants to kiss her. 

 

“Hey,” he starts, glancing over at her with a little smile. “C’mere.”

 

For the first time all week, a flicker of… well,  _ anything  _ lights in her eyes and she lets out a fond little huff before she leans down to press her lips to the corner of his. 

 

“I need to put on my face,” she says, and he nods.

 

“This’ll be ready soon.”

 

“I will be quick.”

 

They’re flirting again. That’s a good sign, right? It feels like a _great_ sign. He watches her go with a little grin and turns back to breakfast.

 

Jack’s dishing up two plates of Indiana-Korea Takeout: Breakfast Edition when his phone vibrates on the counter top.

 

Jack declines the call and sets the table before it buzzes again, one quick vibration. He’s hit with a mild sense of déjà vu as he checks Angela’s text.

 

[You’re due for a physical examination next Tuesday. Will you have returned by then, or shall we reschedule?]

 

It’s the first text she’s sent all week, and just on time - that’s usually how long she lasts before checking in on him. Jack’s a grown man, but the sentimental old fool in him appreciates her concern. He leans back against the counter and taps back: [i’ll be back by tues. you can hold your damn horses to lecture me about my blood pressure until then.]

 

[A healthcare professional does not lecture, Mr. Morrison. She can only express the importance of a healthier lifestyle.]

 

[guess i have to be the one to mention the hail of bullets kind of life i lead]

 

[I felt it prudent not to mention until your physical.]

 

“What makes you smile like this?”

 

Glancing up from the phone, the grin doesn’t fall from Jack’s face as Widowmaker steps back into the room. Her face is lovely, painted and guarded. Then, his smile does slip, just a little.

 

“Nothing,” he shrugs, setting it on the counter. “Got an appointment with the doc.”

 

Jack can practically see the walls behind her eyes slam shut.

 

“I see.”

 

Her voice, colder than ice, sends a shiver up his spine. Jack brushes it off and waves toward the table. “Breakfast?”

 

“Suddenly, I have lost my appetite.”

 

A furrow wrinkles Jack’s brow. “Don’t be ridiculous, you’ll be starving by eight.”

 

“Then I will eat at the airport,” she replies, all frost as she swings her bag over a shoulder and hefts up her rifle case.

 

“You can’t stand airport food.”

 

“It is not the most unpalatable thing in my immediate future,” she sniffs, and lifts her chin. “I will make my own way. Au revoir.”

 

Jack watches her stride to the door, head held high, her back a straight hard line before she throws over her shoulder, “And give my regards to your pet doctor.”

 

He starts. “... My  _ what?” _

 

But the door snicks shut behind her, and the Widowmaker disappears along with his answers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sitting at the table over two cold breakfasts, Jack thinks on it - pours over his brief, few memories of the most recent times they’ve spent together, and the pieces of the puzzle come to fit something much simpler and stranger than he’d imagined.

 

“Well... shit.”

  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

He thinks on it a little longer while he spends his last couple of days in the city, on the plane home, in his bunk when he’s finally settled back in. 

 

The furrow never leaves his brow. 

 

Because as simple as it is, as strange as it is, it’s also patently _ridiculous_. If texting his coworker of, his teammate and confidant, of several decades has put him in the doghouse… he can scarcely believe it. Of all the pitfalls he’d imagined in consorting with the Widowmaker, jealousy wasn’t one of them. So far out of the realm of possibility as to be laughable.

 

But here he is.

 

So Jack Morrison, Soldier 76, at 0200 hours, concocts a plan.

 

“I’m too old for this shit,” he grumbles to himself, swinging his legs out of bed. He hasn’t yet tucked away all his private belongings, so he pulls his phone from the duffel bag and turns it on. 

 

[your coordinates next week?]

 

He doesn’t put the phone away after the single text, bringing it to bed instead. He waits ten minutes while parsing through online catalogues of internationally renowned floral industries when before he returns to his messages. 

 

[important.]

 

Jack waits another ten, narrowing his searches. Irritation simmers quietly in the back of his mind, but with it, a strange sort of fondness.

 

[got something in mind.]

 

He finally falls asleep, still no response, but in the morning a very brief, clipped message awaits him in his inbox.

 

[Classified.]

 

A little grin ticks up the corner of his lips.

 

[your job coordinates will be intercepted w or w/out your assist. i’d like the cord. of your temp. domicile.]

 

He hits send before clicking his tongue at himself and jotting down a quick follow-up:

 

[please]

 

It isn’t until later that night after a long, grueling evening of refereeing a table tennis tournament in the rec room and a shower that Jack gets his answer in the form of a long series of numbers. He perks up, rubbing at his freshly cut hair with a towel as he returns to the internet with his answer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
  
  


[What have you done.]

 

It’s the only indication he has that his gift has been delivered, and that alone is a relief. Navigating flower delivery in Portuguese is a hassle enough; it’s only a bigger pain in the ass to be in Spain himself at the time of the delivery. But Spain is where Overwatch’s systems had intercepted Talon’s latest mission, so Spain is where they went. While they lick their wounds in a humble Barcelona apartment, their presence a reassurance to the city more than anything, Talon’s high-ranking operatives had retreated over the border. 

 

By now, a tiny apartment in Coimbra will be permeated with the scent of violets and lilacs. Should be. Hopefully is. 

 

To his surprise, he sees her typing out another text. [Was this you?]

 

[of course it was me. how do you like them?]

 

[You could not be more conspicuous if you were spread over the front door with the stems lodged up your ass.]

 

Jack chuckles to himself a little before it grows into a full barking laugh. He stifles it quick, careful not to raise questions from the kids on the other side of the wall.  


 

[strange turn for this conversation to take. don’t know if i’d be up for that.] 

 

He doesn’t get any further responses that night, but that’s alright. The deed is done, and even if the scenario wasn’t ideal, it definitely could have gone worse.

 

And, well… it sort of does.

 

The next time they meet is in the middle of a fire fight.

 

This time Jack wasn’t in the front line; he was in the reserves, flown in last minute after Tracer was compromised going after Widowmaker herself. The team had found her not long after she’d run off, out of breath and trussed up around a street lamp in an abandoned district in Lima.

 

So now here he is, dodging bullets in the shadows while Talon’s low ranking goons try to catch a goddamn super soldier through the streets. As far as Jack knows, they’re not even utilizing their own super soldier. Typical.

 

He can’t scale a building with the speed or agility of a Shimada, and he never really could, but Jack’s an old hat at locating fire escapes and using them for the opposite of their intended purpose. He loses his tails on a rooftop, watching them scatter like ants far below.

 

Behind him, there’s the telltale click of a tongue.

 

“Huh.” Jack straightens up and turns. “Fancy meeting you here.”

 

“I should shoot you,” the Widowmaker drawls, cocking a hip on the other side of the roof, her body a shapely silhouette against the bright lights of the city beyond.

 

“Out of respect for the job. I get it.”

 

She sniffs. “It would be a swift kill.”

 

“Uh huh." He takes a step closer. "Single shot.”

 

“I have a reputation to maintain.”

 

Jack nods. “I can respect that.” And from his jacket pocket he pulls a long plastic bag. “Be a shame if you didn’t loot me after. You might miss these.”

 

Her own visor glows dully in the dark and she catches the bag he tosses without fumbling. It’s an unmarked see-through plastic, filled the girth of her forearm with -

 

“... Street food.”

 

“Hey now.” Jack nods toward the bag. “I have it on good authority that those are the best chocolate-coated coffee beans south of the border.”

 

Widowmaker doesn’t move. “Street food.”

 

“Toasted coffee beans, dusted with the finest hand-crushed cocoa powder I’ve ever tasted. Thought you might like ’em. They’re still warm.”

 

“Yes.” She squeezes the bag. “I assumed your body heat was to blame.”

 

Jack rolls his shoulders and takes a quick scan of the ground below with his visor. Attempting nonchalance, he says, “Flowers and chocolate are a real traditional pair. Or… so they say.”

 

She looks the bag over. In the distance are the sounds of the city - honking cars, the occasional peppering of an emergency vehicle. Somewhere a little closer by, gunshots. All ambient noise compared to the rustle of coffee beans in her hand as she squeezes. In the dark, through his visor’s heat signature, he can see her gaze switch to him. 

 

“You have become... indiscreet.”

 

He rolls his shoulders. “Have I? I must be slipping in my old age.”   
  


She tuts. “It is no laughing matter. I would call you an oaf, but I know you can do better. You are enjoying this.”

 

“Not here to oust you, sweetheart,” he says, taking a step forward. “I just thought you might like a little something every once in awhile. And I think,” another step, “we might have something to discuss.”

 

Something in her posture changes. The Widowmaker reaches for her grappling hook and turns, stepping up to the ledge. 

 

“Hey, wait -” Jack starts, trotting closer, but Widowmaker scoffs, 

 

“I have a job to do.”

 

And she steps off the ledge. 

 

Not a moment later she reappears on the next rooftop, sprinting away from him toward the sound of gunfire. Jack rubs a hand over his head before pivoting on his heel back toward the fire escape, 

 

At least she didn’t toss the bag away - not where he could see it, anyway. He’s going to consider it a win. 

 

Small victories, and all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Except… it doesn’t feel like much of a victory when, for the most part, she doesn’t return his texts. And when she does, it’s monosyllabic or intentionally difficult to respond to, and… honestly, it’s ridiculous. Mildly infuriating. If he thought for a moment she was tired, or bored, or finished with old Soldier: 76 in the more traditional, more _final_ sort of sense, Jack likes to think he’d have the decency to bow out with grace and tact.

 

But he doesn’t because she most certainly isn’t.

 

He considers, more than once, that his old vanity might be catching up with him. That maybe - the thoughts gnaw - he’s deluding himself. But they’d gone so swiftly from fine and dandy, from watching old movies on a couch in their own private apartment and falling into bed smiling, to… whatever they’re doing now. This awkward unbalanced dance for two she’s constructed to make Jack to trip over his own damn feet. And it all started after Angela’s texts. 

 

They’re a little too old to be nursing bouts of jealousy, and so Jack decides that after tending her ego with flowers and chocolate, it might be time to take a firmer hand. 

 

With a little luck, he’ll be able to crush a little lover’s envy under his boot just as easily as a hacked communicator.

  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They meet again in August, when the heat is so sweltering it borders unbearable. The kind old auntie hands Jack a glass bottle of melon soda on his way up the stairs, and one for “pretty young Amélie”. He won’t deny he feels a little jolt of relief at the confirmation that she’s here after all. There was no small part of him that didn’t consider she might not show.

 

But she’s there in the living room, fiddling with the thermostat in a sleeveless turtleneck, and Jack feels the ebb of fondness that always eats at him when he sees her in the flesh. 

 

“Hey,” he says, dropping his bags off on the table before toeing out of his boots. Ignoring the house slippers, he walks to her in sock feet. “Here. Got something for you.”

 

She takes the bottle with a short, “Merci,” and snaps the thermostat shut.

 

Jack fetches takeout from her favorite (and completely inauthentic) Italian place down the street, and they eat mostly in silence. But now that Jack can identify that first and foremost agonizing gut feeling, he can do something about it. Jack leaves her with his dessert - chocolate cake stuffed with red beans - showers, and makes sure his phone is powered off and tucked away in his bag before he joins Widowmaker on the sofa.

 

There must be something telling in his body language, because she eyes him with suspicion when he settles in beside her, handing over a beer. “Want one?” he asks, cracking open his own.

 

“No.”

 

“Suit yourself.”

 

Jack drops one on the sofa between them and takes a sip of his own. He lets it roll over his tongue and bubble down his throat before he clears it, lifting his left ankle over his right knee. “Think you and I might need to have a talk.”

 

She scoffs and takes the beer between them after all. It cracks with a particularly vicious hiss. “I do not think we do.”

 

“And I think you’re full of shit.”

 

They sit in silence for a handful of moments, not half so agonizing for him now. Finally he finishes his beer and makes to stand to recycle the can, but her hand on his wrist stops him. Her skin is always a little colder than anticipated, but nothing she can’t blame on poor circulation. Jack looks her way and slowly settles back.

 

“Talk, then,” she says with a wave of her hand. He takes in her regal posture, the way she won’t meet his eyes, and stuffs the can in between the sofa cushions.

 

“I can do that. You want me to dance around it like I’ve been trying to for half a goddamn year, or you think I should get down to brass tacks?”

 

Now she looks his way, fully, for the first time all night. He feels bolstered then, by all the frustration, irritation, affection he’s been bottling up, and it’s all thanks to the frostiest deer in headlights he’s ever seen.

 

“Do not speak to me like I am an errant child.”

 

“Alright,” Jack nods, “I won’t.” 

 

He plants both his feet on the floor and moves over closer to her, not quite close enough to touch, but nearly just. 

 

“Stop me when I’m wrong,” he says, folding his arms over his chest and staring at the window opposite. “You got mad, last year. I was texting Mercy.”

 

When he glances over, her blue lips curl in distaste, but she doesn’t stop him. 

 

“I’d nearly forgotten about it - had to think real hard, but you called it flirting once. I took it as a joke. Didn’t realize you were being serious.”

 

“I do not joke.”

 

“More bullshit." He smirks at the window. "You were pissed about it, and tried to teach me a lesson through silence. I didn’t cop on until the last day of our trip out here in April when the air around you plummeted twenty degrees when she texted me again. ‘Cause I had the audacity to talk friendly to an old friend.”

 

Jack unfolds his arms to run a hand through his hair and sigh a sigh that comes from way down deep in his soul. “I get it. Sort of. Objectively, maybe, not subjectively. But I’ve gotta say… you’ve been ridiculous.”

 

She bristles like a cat. “I will not be ridiculed -”

 

“Well, that's real tough, because you’ve been  _ ridiculous _ ,” he growls, frustration like an angry moth in his stomach as he turns to face her fully, “because the only woman in the whole damn world I’m interested in is you. Just... you.” He waves at her. “Only you.”

 

Under his gaze, Jack sees her head duck the slightest inch.

 

“To suggest that I could be envious of that fluffed up pigeon...” She sniffs again, but this time, it’s quiet. “There is no comparison.”

 

“You’re damn right there isn’t.” He reaches out, drawing his knuckles over her knee. “Nothing to compare. And I mean that. ’Cause listen, and you’ve really gotta listen here, this is important... I’m always gonna have friends, and plenty of ’em are women. And I’m gonna smile at the shit they say, because they’re too clever for their own damn good. They’re important to me.  _ Mercy _ is important to me. Nothing’s gonna change that.” He lifts his hand from her knee to her hair, recalling sunhats and strong alcohol, and John Jack Morrison huffs a laugh. “But see, I don’t lease an island getaway home with Mercy, now do I.”

 

Widowmaker mutters something in French before setting her beer on the floor and swinging a leg over to straddle his lap. He draws his hands up the backs of her thighs, warm under microfiber leggings. A smile pulls at his scarred lips.

 

“Hey there. Missed you too.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She kisses him hard when he takes her to bed, which is par for the course for the people they are and the apologies they’re capable of making. He’s pretty sure it’s an apology, anyway - regardless, he’ll take it.

 

And he’ll take her, too, rolling her onto the stark white sheets of their bed. She lets herself be pressed down, lets him kiss her neck .Softly, almost sweetly, she runs her nails down the side of his jaw - freshly shaven, no rasp of stubble, which seems to disappoint her but, well. An old soldier has his routine. 

 

When she takes the lobe of his ear between her teeth, Jack grumbles something unintelligible even to himself against her skin and slides a hand up her inner thigh.

 

“We gonna do this?” he says, and in response she slings one of her legs around his hip and pulls him in closer. He huffs, propping himself up on his elbows to look down at her. “You got a real way with words. That’s what I’ve always liked about you.”

 

“You are uncharacteristically chatty tonight,” says she, brow furrowed. Yet still she curls a hand at the back of his neck and pulls him down for a kiss. What begins as a hard, demanding thing gentles as Jack wills it, settling his body weight atop her in a long slow press. 

 

“Hmm.” Jack presses his mouth to the corner of her lips, her chin, her jaw. “Thought you liked my dulcet tones.”

 

She laughs, the noise breathless. “What is the saying?” Her nails scrape through his hair, too short to tangle. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

 

“Then I figure your heart must be _real_ damn fond by now.”

 

She scoffs, shifting her weight in such a way that his body recalls as familiar, and when her thighs clench around him and move him on to his back, he rolls with it.

 

Her hands crawl beneath his t-shirt, dragging it up and up until the soft grey fabric bunches over his chest and armpits. 

 

“I have no heart.”

 

Jack smirks. “No?”

 

She scoots down, popping his fly open. “Whatever lingers in my chest has long ceased to beat.”

 

Jack’s fingers rise to brush her cool cheek and his leer softens. “Sure,” he allows. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

In his far off youth, Jack’s family had a wild filly that was easier to tame than Widowmaker is when she’s grinding against his face. It’s hard enough to focus with the velvet-soft heat of her throat as she swallows him down on the other side of the bed. He grips desperately at her hips and ass to keep her still enough to mouth at her while she sets a dizzying pace.

 

Her fingers are locked in a tight circle around the base of his cock as she swallows him down, again and again, and the constriction, the heat, the obscene wet noises she makes have him groaning as he struggles to focus on his task.

 

The hot breath of his pants against her clitoris make Widowmaker’s thighs quake around his ears and Jack pulls her down to probe his tongue inside of her.

 

He twitches at the feather-light brush of her hair as it falls from her shoulder against his bare thigh.

 

It’s almost cool compared to the rising heat of his body. Jack feels his thighs splay wider, and he’s rewarded by the tip of her tongue prodding the hole of his cockhead. His hips jerk, and she pulls back with a throaty laugh, laving at the bead of precum.

 

“Easy there,” he grunts, and suckles at her swollen clit until her hips roll in slow, jolting circles.

 

Jack parts the lips of her cunt with both thumbs and draws his tongue in abstract shapes against her.

 

She comes quaking and cursing, and almost vindictively, she begins dragging her plump lips up the line of Jack’s cock. 

 

His leg curls up at the knee and Jack allows himself the briefest moment to draw his hand through her hair, hold her head steady and tilt his hips up as she opens her mouth and swallows him down again. And it’s tempting, very tempting to let her keep going, and he very nearly lets her when she swallows around him. Stars pop and fizzle behind his eyes, but Jack has a plan.

 

“Hey, get up here,” he hoarsely says in lieu of pulling her hair, and is rewarded for this mindfulness by a kiss to the head of his dick once she pulls off. She rolls off of him and looks down the planes of his body, licking her lips. They shine, slick with saliva, somewhat swollen, and Jack hefts himself up in a sitting position to catch them.

 

Her laughter is as soft as breathing when he kisses her. “Do you enjoy the taste?” she asks, mischief sparking in her eyes. Jack shrugs and kisses her again. 

 

“Much as you enjoy being vulgar in bed,” he grunts, and scoops her up close in his arms. 

 

They fall to their sides, and Widowmaker wastes no time taking him in hand. She palms at his shaft, cups his balls, and Jack pants hotly against her mouth. He makes a noise after it gets a little too good. “Get outta there,” he says and bats her hand away.

 

Jack takes the opportunity to pull his shirt over his head and fling it over the bed, and rucks at hers as well. Obligingly, she pulls that off, and unclasps her bra from behind. It’s gotta be awkward to move like that on her side, but she doesn’t complain, dropping the garment of black lace to the side. 

 

“It is always good to see that you can keep up in your old age,” she says, the cheeky thing, and Jack mutters something or other about double entendres as he slings one of her legs over his hips. 

  
There on her side, he can look at her face pillowed by a pool of her own dark hair as he reaches down and touches her. He can see the flutter of her eyelashes, the parting of her lips when he teases her back into wakening, curling two fingers, then three inside her. 

 

When she makes a noise and her hips begin to cant against his hand, he pulls it away. She frowns, caught between a scowl and a pout, and Jack grins as he shifts his own legs a little. “Patience is a virtue,” he reminds her, guiding himself to her with his hand. She snorts, leaning forward enough to tap her forehead to his.

 

“You ought to tell somebody virtuous.”

 

With a couple rolls of his hips, he presses inside her, and a contented sigh floats from her lips. She curls a hand around his throat, and Jack knows she must feel the flutter of his heartbeat, confessed by the unsteady rhythm with which he pushes into her again, and again, and again. “ _ Fuck,” _ he growls through gritted teeth, pulling her leg higher upon his waist and slipping a knee between her legs to give himself more momentum. 

 

“Vulgarities in bed,” she chides him, breathlessly. He smiles against her cool skin and knocks his forehead to hers.

 

“Can’t be helped.”

 

“I could hardly  _ blame  _ you.”

 

Jack takes his hand from her thigh, full trust in her grip, and wraps an arm around her instead. 

 

“You’re unreal,” he mutters against her temple. Her amused hum might as well be the purr of a smug cat. Her hand lifts from his neck to draw up the side of his skull, nails carding once more through his hair.

 

“I am.”

 

The first time Soldier 76 fucked Widowmaker was nothing like this. He couldn’t feel her breath on his jaw or the cool wisp of her hair against his cheek. It was hard and rough, the subtle hint of her perfume and sweat cloying at the back of his throat for weeks. Desperation turned to fascination somehow, somehow turned to a tiny apartment in Hong Kong and Asian-American fusion breakfasts. Sunhats on the beach. Liquor so strong it could peel paint. 

 

Swept up by unbidden emotion, Jack presses half a dozen open-mouthed kisses to her neck, scraping his teeth against soft skin when the noise she makes borderlines skepticism.

 

“Let me love on you for a minute,” he grunts, curling his tongue into the salty, silken dip of her collar bone.   

 

To her credit, she does let him. 

 

Before long, she reaches down between them, touching herself in that cramped space between their bodies as he feels the heat in his gut wind tighter and tighter, coiled like a spring trap. He shoves into her a little faster, a little harder until they’re both lost in it, hot breath and damp sheets and - 

 

He comes down in a slow and golden daze, eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks. He blows out a long breath and glances over at Widowmaker who stretches out in a long line beside him.

 

Nonchalantly, as lazy as the cat who caught the canary, she hums, “I had thought I might have you begging for mercy,” and Jack can’t stop himself from laughing.

**Author's Note:**

> Fic involves a somewhat unhealthy relationship dynamic, though characters actively seek to improve it by the end. The emotional manipulation involved is Widowmaker's jealous suspicions leading her to give Jack the silent treatment and the cold shoulder, despite his many attempts to appeal to her. 
> 
> Fic briefly references the torture Widowmaker has experienced under Talon, in a manner where Jack understands and respects her unprompted shifts in mood and need for space.
> 
> Inquire about fic requests [here!](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/ask)  
> Tumblr: [wardencommando](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/).  
> Battle.net ID: byacolate#1589


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